Undercutting bots are getting out of control!

Edited:

11retainer got baited by insane low price and undercut each other 24/7 at a perfectly 10min interval is not evidence to you guys.
fine.

I used to think ffxiv has a great community,
but then now I realize this community will try everything they could to passively protect these bots, for some reason.

I played 12hours yesterday and was selling 60 pieces of gears, manually updating my price every hour,
yet nothing sells, because of these undercut bots, because there is 10+ bot undercutting me automatically

but all of you would just keep passively defending them by saving "there is no proof" "just give up"
it is disgusting.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

Suggest you keep it in this thread.

Also namecalling is against ToS so I suggest you remove those links.

Also your so called evidence is proving nothing. Some people just undercut to get you to lower it even more to buy it off you and flip it.

Harassing bots is against ToS, sorry.

Enjoy. F

Its a free market and if they want to they are free to undercut to even lower than vendor price, just because they keep a close eye on their auctions is no proof that they are bots.
In my opinion you undercutting by the amounts you have is way more despicable than someone trying to get their wares to the front of the line.
If you undercut me like that i would make it my mission to see that nothing you post would ever sell.

Also showing their names is against the ToS, and trying to get your competition banned with no evidence lacks honor.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...Market-botting

Suggest you keep it in this thread.

Also namecalling is against ToS so I suggest you remove those links.

Also your so called evidence is proving nothing. Some people just undercut to get you to lower it even more to buy it off you and flip it.

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If undercutting perfectly every 10mins and fall for getting undercut by ridiculous price is not evidence, I don't know what is.
Especially these bots are still undercutting each other every 10mins for the past 10hours, its ongoing.

Every 10 minutes? That's literally nothing. Some people keep refreshing their listings.
You're just speculating, that's no proof.

I don't undercut people like that normally,

only after I suspected them because I played 12hours yesterday,
and undercut by 1gil every 1hour and was selling 40 exarchic gear,
still I sold nothing, then I realize something is off and started testing them.

now I am just seeing a bunch of bots undercutting each other below 50k

Move on to new market or let them sit, it will sell eventually. It's this period of the expansion where everyone is literally trying to make gil and nothing really sells anymore.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Move on to new market or let them sit, it will sell eventually. It's this period of the expansion where everyone is literally trying to make gil and nothing really sells anymore.

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I moved already, multiple times, from different exarchic gears to aesthetic gears,
it doesn't work because of these bots.
Seeing bots undercutting me every mins is demotivating (these bots undercut every 10mins, but there is 10 different bots from 3 different person)

I literally played 12hours last night and manually updated my gear every hours, yet nothing sells

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

but all of you would just keep passively defending them by saving "there is no proof" "just give up"
it is disgusting.

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Classy. Circumstantial evidence don't mean they're botting my dude.

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

I moved already, multiple times, from different exarchic gears to aesthetic gears,
it doesn't work because of these bots.
Seeing bots undercutting me every mins is demotivating (these bots undercut every 10mins, but there is 10 different bots from 3 different person)

I literally played 12hours last night and manually updated my gear every hours, yet nothing sells

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That's probably the worst items to craft this time around cause everyone and their mom has crafters leveled up. This is the downside of making crafting so accessible.
You need to find a market that has little compition and spread your market, don't sell on 1 specific market (i.e exarchic and aeshetic). You're selling yourself short.

The points and "proof" you've provided don't convince me they're bots just same as you, anoyed someone is petty undercutting them and has little to nothing to lose on undercut you until you give up.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

Every 10 minutes? That's literally nothing. Some people keep refreshing their listings.
You're just speculating, that's no proof.

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Yeah, I've had people refresh their listings just seconds after I update mine. I always win in the end though. After a certain point it isn't about the gil. It's about the message. :p

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

If undercutting perfectly every 10mins and fall for getting undercut by ridiculous price is not evidence, I don't know what is.
Especially these bots are still undercutting each other every 10mins for the past 10hours, its ongoing.

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If you're capable of checking every 10 minutes to see you've been undercut, you're also capable changing the price on your listings every 10 minutes.

If you can do it, so can other players.

I'm not saying there aren't bots out there. I'm saying what you're claiming to be "proof" isn't.

I'm sure this game has the same type of cutthroat market barons that I competed against in WoW who did nothing all day long but check prices and relist items because that was fun to them. They're play to be rich and gil is their scorecard.

The worst thing you can do is participate in an undercut war because then you look like you're a bot yourself. Decide on what you think is a reasonable price and stick with it. There are players that hate the undercutters and bots, and they will pay a little bit extra to try to avoid buying from one. If you're still having problems selling items, switch to something else to sell. There are thousands of items to choose from and many of them are very profitable while being overlooked by the bots and even other crafters in many cases.

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

I moved already, multiple times, from different exarchic gears to aesthetic gears,
it doesn't work because of these bots.
Seeing bots undercutting me every mins is demotivating (these bots undercut every 10mins, but there is 10 different bots from 3 different person)

I literally played 12hours last night and manually updated my gear every hours, yet nothing sells

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And everybody else wants to be selling those because once upon a time end game gear sold for huge prices because few players were capable of making it.

It doesn't anymore. Too many players are capable of making it now and even if not all of them are selling it on the MB they're still making it for themselves and their friends, which cuts down on the number of buyers for the gear.

Find other things that people are still buying. There's plenty of items I see selling the MB for 75-100k that cost less than 5k to make. There's 70k profit. Exarchic or Aesthete might sell for 125k but how much of that is profit when you consider cost of materials (or what they would sell for if you sold the materials instead)?

While it is true that undercutter spamming is not necessarily indicative of a bot, these days it usually is as their aggressive behavior is what drives/drove the competition away.

You can almost always check on the undercutters in question and see that they're bare-bones accounts who've done basically nothing other then level a single DoW/M class to 80 then maxed out all of their DoH/L jobs, and it's not uncommon to be able to find them gathering their mats out in the field where their botting is much more obvious.

If you are trying to make gil of the board..really just look for what has relatively few listings and go with that.

And generally ignore the topmost/newest stuff. There will always be people who need level 10-50 gear. Not a big haul but it adds up. Alternatively just sell materials at a markup (you can buy many from NPCs and just resell it for profit).

Unless you are trying to make millions real fast in which case, crafting isn’t the way.

You are much better off doing treasure maps and selling drops…

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Originally Posted by kaynide

You are much better off doing treasure maps and selling drops…

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Even that is losing viability as a method of making gil now that treasure map bot squads have established themselves on most servers.

Honestly, I think leve spamming is probably the most efficient (Albeit limited) method of gaining gil now.

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Even that is losing viability as a method of making gil now that treasure map bot squads have established themselves on most servers.

Honestly, I think leve spamming is probably the most efficient (Albeit limited) method of gaining gil now.

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These days it is arguably more profitable to just sell the maps depending on the server. I was having some decent luck with opening Gliderskin coffers for awhile but they have for whatever reason begun to run dry. So...I'm selling Zonureskin maps for now.

I undercut by 1 gil multiple times a day, even then sometimes just after I'm undercut in the same way. It may be bots or a very dedicated player, but I suspect bots for this do exist. We get bots for most things, even for treasure maps themselves, so I do believe some items may be affected by undercutting bots. I don't know what we can do about them, so I keep undercutting anyway.


I always undercut by 1 gil, because I don't want to destroy the market and margins for that item... to me is far worse when someone undercuts by a large margin. Someone will undercut them in turn, and they will lower their price even more. I was selling an emote yesterday. It was 800.000 gil. Some mild undercutting was happening, until someone lowered their price to 700.000. Next time I saw it it was 580.000... There, market destroyed. (said emote was consistently selling for around 800k).


Since undercutting is inevitable, if everyone undercut by 1 gil the market would be so much better! The goal is only to get the first listing anyway...

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Originally Posted by KageTokage

Even that is losing viability as a method of making gil now that treasure map bot squads have established themselves on most servers.

Honestly, I think leve spamming is probably the most efficient (Albeit limited) method of gaining gil now.

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You’re not wrong, and like Vanlnir said just straight selling maps ain’t a bad idea. I get a fair bit of coin out of my submarine fleet at this point in the expac but even that is drying up.

I think for OP (and anyone really) if you are planning to make serious money, you have to plan to spend serious money/effort as the expac launches and be on bleeding edge for crafting. The more people that can provide supply, the lower prices are gonna plummet…

Selling maps, older gear used for leveling both for DoM/DoW and DoH/L is easy gil.
Selling some materials people lazy to get but need in bulk (Dwarven Cotton Ball) for example.

Starter gear sells like hotcakes. People rather go to a marketboard than find the gear seller. I've bought gear for 50-100 gil and sold it for 20000+.

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Originally Posted by Starshower

I undercut by 1 gil multiple times a day, even then sometimes just after I'm undercut in the same way. It may be bots or a very dedicated player, but I suspect bots for this do exist. We get bots for most things, even for treasure maps themselves, so I do believe some items may be affected by undercutting bots. I don't know what we can do about them, so I keep undercutting anyway.


I always undercut by 1 gil, because I don't want to destroy the market and margins for that item... to me is far worse when someone undercuts by a large margin. Someone will undercut them in turn, and they will lower their price even more. I was selling an emote yesterday. It was 800.000 gil. Some mild undercutting was happening, until someone lowered their price to 700.000. Next time I saw it it was 580.000... There, market destroyed. (said emote was consistently selling for around 800k).


Since undercutting is inevitable, if everyone undercut by 1 gil the market would be so much better! The goal is only to get the first listing anyway...

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Personally i never buy from the guy who undercuts by 1 gil. Price match, offer me an actual lower price, or GTFO. And all the undercutting you describe here seems pointless. If the emote is selling "consistently" at 800k, list yours at 800k and in a day or two itll sell after the other guys are bought out for much less then they could have made. Consistently implies that it sells at a predictably good frequency. If you instead meant that it rarely sells but you have recently been able to get 800k for it, that probly means its overpriced. If thats the case, you may need to embrace a lower pricepoint.

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

Edited:

11retainer got baited by insane low price and undercut each other 24/7 at a perfectly 10min interval is not evidence to you guys.
fine.

I used to think ffxiv has a great community,
but then now I realize this community will try everything they could to passively protect these bots, for some reason.

I played 12hours yesterday and was selling 60 pieces of gears, manually updating my price every hour,
yet nothing sells, because of these undercut bots, because there is 10+ bot undercutting me automatically

but all of you would just keep passively defending them by saving "there is no proof" "just give up"
it is disgusting.

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who defends the bots? seriously, if you look in the market and retainers section, there are a lot of people against the bots. its a known issue. dont blame the general game community for the cheaters, the blame lies with the people that support RMT. we have a discord that has people that regularily report the known bots.

undercutting by a gil repeatedly is an mmo thing as much as its a rl thing. dont stress over that.

The market bots, well, unless SE decides to do something, all you can do is keep reporting

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Originally Posted by BunnyGrill

I don't undercut people like that normally,

only after I suspected them because I played 12hours yesterday,
and undercut by 1gil every 1hour and was selling 40 exarchic gear,
still I sold nothing, then I realize something is off and started testing them.

now I am just seeing a bunch of bots undercutting each other below 50k

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you want to sell exarchic gear, as someone who sold a lot... its a job.
changing your price every hour.. thats why you never sold anything. when I was working the boards, I stood on them for 8 hours a day, bot changed its price, I changed, and not by 1 gil, was typically in 5k to 10k increments
and I sold things. many things. changing prices every hour and by 1 gil, doesnt differentiate you and there are 59 other minutes where you can be undersold.

quick lesson. bots have a floor. find that floor, its not hard. real people will go below that, and undercut you by a gil all the way down.
actual bots will not drop below their floor.

basically, I stopped selling, because the effort wasnt worth my sanity. next expansion likely be back at it, but for now, enjoying other things
if working the markets (and it is work) is affecting you this much, I suggest a break from the market
bots are frustrating. so are people. but if it is affecting, join the other thread, join the discord, we have a spreadsheet of the knowns that people find.
above all, take a breath and relax

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Originally Posted by Frizze

Personally i never buy from the guy who undercuts by 1 gil. Price match, offer me an actual lower price, or GTFO. And all the undercutting you describe here seems pointless. If the emote is selling "consistently" at 800k, list yours at 800k and in a day or two itll sell after the other guys are bought out for much less then they could have made. Consistently implies that it sells at a predictably good frequency. If you instead meant that it rarely sells but you have recently been able to get 800k for it, that probly means its overpriced. If thats the case, you may need to embrace a lower pricepoint.

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By consistently I meant 3 times or so every day. And I notice a lot of times people buy the listing above mine. That's OK. I'll continue to undercut by 1 gil... If I matched prices there would be an equal chance my listing wouldn't be the one bought. I just dont undercut when the price falls to much. Like that time the price dropped to 580k. I didn't undercut that crazy undercutter because I didn't want to destroy the market. I'd rather wait for his listing to sell and let mine be sold for a higher price.

What this game could need is buy orders.

Make it so that players can "order" items on the market-board so that if someone tries to sell an item they have to sell it to the highest buy order.

This way no one should be able to tank the price of items as easily.

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Originally Posted by GrizzlyTank

What this game could need is buy orders.

Make it so that players can "order" items on the market-board so that if someone tries to sell an item they have to sell it to the highest buy order.

This way no one should be able to tank the price of items as easily.

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A free market is better, in my opinion. If this was an option alongside this "order" system then yeah, sure, but as things are it's fine even if some players are...much less intelligent than most when it comes to making a profit by undercutting to heck and back. What isn't fine though is the bots who have hijacked certain markets.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

A free market is better, in my opinion. If this was an option alongside this "order" system then yeah, sure, but as things are it's fine even if some players are...much less intelligent than most when it comes to making a profit by undercutting to heck and back. What isn't fine though is the bots who have hijacked certain markets.

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I happen to really like you in these forums, so I won't be offended if you were calling me dumb in this respect, but how am I to do better then? If I'm not undercutting to get my items to sell what should I be doing? Putting a price and waiting one week to see if my items sold? what If I want to sell a large volume of items and don't have enough retainer space to sell it all in this way?

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Originally Posted by Starshower

I happen to really like you in these forums, so I won't be offended if you were calling me dumb in this respect, but how am I to do better then? If I'm not undercutting to get my items to sell what should I be doing? Putting a price and waiting one week to see if my items sold? what If I want to sell a large volume of items and don't have enough retainer space to sell it all in this way?

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Oh no, I wasn't really calling anyone dumb per say, they just lack the market know-how which was more or less what I meant. I suppose I should have said that a lot of players aren't smart when it comes to the MB. I didn't mean to call anyone dumb, so I apologize. There's also a difference between undercutting by 10-20 or up to a few hundred gil and undercutting to extremes. It's when players get into the thousands/tens of thousands where markets begin to crash. Personally, I will list a bunch of things and leave them be for a week or so, sometimes longer. This is when I have 5-6 retainers full of items to sell. Maybe more if I've been busy and my retainers have been kind. If they haven't sold by then (more often than not they don't, as I've been undercut a dozen times at least between the time I list my stuff and when I go to adjust the prices) I will usually go half off on everything if not more as sort of a "clearance" sale. Everything must go! There's nothing wrong with getting rid of your stock to make room for more things to sell. Players just...tend to take a high selling item and tank the price within a day. To me, that is not being smart. It is being greedy and not maximizing one's profits. That is what I and most other people have an issue with. All I can really suggest is not contributing to the undercut wars if you can, at least not bad enough to tank the price, but sometimes you simply have to ride the wave before it crashes.

Free market... This market is more obtuse than free. Need 3 of something? Either buy 3 for 10k or 99 for 300 leaving the item both under and over-priced simultaneously simply because you can't get a custom amount.

The entire market system in this game... sucks.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Oh no, I wasn't really calling anyone dumb per say, they just lack the market know-how which was more or less what I meant. I suppose I should have said that a lot of players aren't smart when it comes to the MB. I didn't mean to call anyone dumb, so I apologize. There's also a difference between undercutting by 10-20 or up to a few hundred gil and undercutting to extremes. It's when players get into the thousands/tens of thousands where markets begin to crash. Personally, I will list a bunch of things and leave them be for a week or so, sometimes longer. This is when I have 5-6 retainers full of items to sell. Maybe more if I've been busy and my retainers have been kind. If they haven't sold by then (more often than not they don't, as I've been undercut a dozen times at least between the time I list my stuff and when I go to adjust the prices) I will usually go half off on everything if not more as sort of a "clearance" sale. Everything must go! There's nothing wrong with getting rid of your stock to make room for more things to sell. Players just...tend to take a high selling item and tank the price within a day. To me, that is not being smart. It is being greedy and not maximizing one's profits. That is what I and most other people have an issue with. All I can really suggest is not contributing to the undercut wars if you can, at least not bad enough to tank the price, but sometimes you simply have to ride the wave before it crashes.

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Yeah, that's basically how I feel... The last thing I want is to crash the market... When I see there is someone that undercuts by a lot on the item I'm selling I stop and let them sell theirs first. And I usually only update prices 2 or 3 times a day.

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Originally Posted by Starshower

If I'm not undercutting to get my items to sell what should I be doing? Putting a price and waiting one week to see if my items sold? what If I want to sell a large volume of items and don't have enough retainer space to sell it all in this way?

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Check sales history to see what the recent sales prices are and how fast the item has been selling. If there are currently 20 items listed but it's taken 3 weeks for the last 20 sales to occur, it's probably not a good idea to be selling that item. The demand does not meet the available supply and those 20 other sellers are trying to get their item sold same as you.

Also don't overprice your item even if you're the only seller. A lot of times I'll come across an item being listed at 200k+ but when I check the sales history, all sales were for less than 30k and spread out over time. If players were interested in paying 200k for the item, you'd see sales for that price. List at 30k instead, which you know people are willing to pay.

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Originally Posted by Kes13a

who defends the bots? seriously, if you look in the market and retainers section, there are a lot of people against the bots. its a known issue. dont blame the general game community for the cheaters, the blame lies with the people that support RMT. we have a discord that has people that regularily report the known bots.

undercutting by a gil repeatedly is an mmo thing as much as its a rl thing. dont stress over that.

The market bots, well, unless SE decides to do something, all you can do is keep reporting

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I am/was apparently defending bots when stating people do undercut you all the time, even at 10 minute intervalls. OP got triggered.